It is a common fact that the QA department is responsible not only for verification of the entire platform or some product but also for the correct performance of its components.

Lots of various programs interact with external services and systems that are probably supported from the outside (90% of the time).

Sometimes QA has to test web content that will be stored externally on the system level. For these purposes, he/she needs the best sites where the developed content can be easily tested, refined, and, if necessary, shown to clients.

Further, we’ll talk about the most popular platforms to this end.

Webhook.site

https://github.com/fredsted/webhook.site

This is a good and logically well-designed product that has a lot of useful functions for testing various software: from creating HTTP stubs and DBMS to working with virtual email addresses.

It has a paid version (its functionality is detailed in the documentation provided on the developer site). Its main feature is open source code.

Among the potential disadvantages of the product, we can note the following: if the team uses Python as a basic programming language, it will be very difficult to build a correct interaction, since PHP is for the back-office here, and JavaScript is for the front-end.

PostBin

https://github.com/ashishbista/postbin

This product is software distributed under the ISC license, which contains a deployed version with limited functionality (only parameters for configuring HTTP stubs).

The stack is 100% JS, both for the front-end and back-office.

Httplive

https://github.com/gencebay/httplive

Comparing with the two products described above, this one doesn’t have a deployed version. As an aside, new users of this tool can watch the video guide on how to use this program (it is in the repository).

On the positive side, we can distinguish an option to create custom endpoints and an intuitive graphical interface.
But overall, this product has a few features (there’s no option to set a response time, and also there’s no configuration of your headers for responses).

Parrot

https://github.com/Uma-Tech/parrot

It is completely available for commercial usage and has its own repository on GitHub with lots of tests for program code: autotests, statistical analysis, contributing verification.

Its main functionality – automated creation of HTTP stubs, logs persistence, options for using different paths for stubs.

Of course, for now, the main functionality of this product is a little inferior to the tools described above, but it is “alive” and is constantly being updated with new features.

In conclusion – a short comparative table of the features of the web products described above.

	Webhook.site	Postbin	Httplive	Parrot
Language	PHP	JS	Golang	Python
License	MIT	ISC	Apache2	Apache2
Mail tests	+	–	–	–
Response templates	+	–	–	–
The Man in The Middle mode	–	–	–	–
Setting the path for HTTP stubs	–	–	+	+
Response body configuration	+	–	+	+